The London Metal Exchange (LME) said it had lifted the temporary ban on the storage of Russian aluminium in LME warehouses immediately after the United States removed Russian aluminium from the sanctions list.

LME’s notification to its members indicates that all Russian-aluminium metals can be approved as the metals listed in the registered warehouse receipt.

Alcoa recently announced that the Foreign Asset Management Office of the U.S. Treasury will remove Alcoa and En, the company’s largest shareholder, from its list of designated nationals and restricted persons, with immediate effect at about 4.15 p.m. on January 27, U.S. time. The Group expects that the settlement and settlement procedures will now return to normal.

“To avoid doubt, this means that all Russian aluminium metals can be approved as registered warehouse receipts (delivered to warehouses approved by LME),” LME wrote in a circular to members, warehousing companies and their London agents.

China Petrochemical, the world’s largest refinery, released its annual performance report for 2018 on May 25, showing that its net profit in 2018 is expected to grow 22.04% year-on-year, reaching 62.4 billion yuan.

In 2018, facing the severe and complicated market situation, Sinopec will take deepening the structural reform of supply side as the main line, comprehensively promote optimization, market expansion, cost reduction, risk control, reform promotion, strict management, strong innovation, Talent Gathering and other work, and achieve good results in production and operation.

Firstly, the company’s production operation was optimized and improved last year. The upstream plate promotes stable and restored production of crude oil and effective production of natural gas, and achieves tangible results in stabilizing oil, increasing gas and reducing cost. The refining sector adheres to market orientation, vigorously optimizes product structure, satisfactorily completes the task of upgrading the quality of Guoliu Oil, actively supports sales and expands the market, and fully guarantees the supply of chemical raw materials. The chemical industry sector seizes the favorable market opportunity, closely links production and marketing, deepens the adjustment of equipment, raw materials and product structure, continues to reduce the cost of raw materials per ton of ethylene, and the proportion of high value-added products of the three major synthetic materials continues to increase.

Secondly, the company’s market development has achieved results. Oil sales actively make good use of the internal production and marketing coordination policy, strive to fight the market hard, in the fierce competition to stabilize sales, domestic oil products business growth year-on-year. Chemical sales have strengthened the links between production, marketing and research, deepened fine marketing and precise service, and continuously improved market leadership. The business volume of chemical products has increased over the previous year. Natural gas sales should strengthen the overall planning of self-produced gas and imported LNG resources, and strengthen the development of pipeline and terminal market. Refining sales have made great efforts to enlarge the scale of operation, with the volume of operations exceeding 40 million tons for the first time. The total amount of lube oil business increased by 5% over the previous year, and the sales of high-end products increased by 10%.

Thirdly, the restructuring of the company was well advanced last year. A batch of new discoveries have been made in oil and gas exploration, and key productivity construction has been accelerated. Weirong shale gas field has become another new productivity construction position after Fuling shale gas field. New steps have been taken in the construction of refining and chemical bases, and a number of oil quality upgrading and refining and chemical structural adjustment projects have been implemented in an orderly manner. The construction of new energy comprehensive demonstration stations has been steadily carried out, and new breakthroughs have been made in overseas petrol retail business. Tianjin LNG and E’ancang pipelines have been built and put into operation together, and Wen23 gas storage and transportation facilities have been accelerated. Easy to send customers, petrochemical e-commerce, Easy to Jie e-commerce and other platforms have developed rapidly. Clean energy business such as geothermal and waste heat utilization has developed steadily.

Finally, Sinopec has made great achievements in scientific and technological innovation last year. We will deepen the reform of the scientific and technological system, stimulate innovation and creativity, increase key core technologies, and promote leading research on cutting-edge technologies to achieve a number of new achievements and new progress. Especially, the new structured zeolite materials have been awarded structural codes by the International Zeolite Association, so as to achieve zero breakthroughs in this field for Chinese enterprises. It has won one second prize for technological invention, three second prizes for scientific and technological progress, 7184 patents and 5241 authorized patents throughout the year, all of which have reached a record high and continue to rank among the leading state-owned enterprises.

Sinopec officials said that in 2018, the company earnestly fulfilled its social responsibility, intensified counterpart support and targeted poverty alleviation efforts to help win the battle of precise poverty alleviation; facing the tense situation of natural gas supply in winter, we should speed up the construction of production, supply, storage and marketing system, expand resources in every possible way, and actively guarantee the stable supply of civil natural gas.

According to the news, Japan’s oil imports fell to the lowest level since 1979 in 2018, while LNG imports and coal imports also declined, reflecting the country’s population decline and slowing economic growth. These data also highlight the rise in energy efficiency and the emergence of alternative fuels for power generation and transportation, while Japan’s growth in nuclear output last year further reduced fossil fuel imports.

Japan’s Ministry of Finance said Wednesday that crude oil imports cleared by Japanese Customs fell 5.8% year on year in 2018. Preliminary data show that Japan, the world’s fourth largest importer of crude oil, imported 3 million barrels of crude oil a day last year, or 17587 million litres. A customs official said it was the lowest level since records began in 1979.

Nevertheless, as the average annual price of crude oil rises, import costs have risen by 25% over the same period last year. LNG imports fell by 0.9% to 82.8554 million tons, the lowest since 2011, but their value increased by 21%. Japan is the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas. Data show that imports of power coal for power generation fell by 0.6% to 136.7 million tons in 2018.

Japan’s imports of fossil fuels in December of last year and the whole year of 2018 showed a daily output of 1 million barrels of crude oil, 1 million litres of petroleum products and gasoline/naphtha, and 1 million tons of liquefied natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas and coal, valued at millions of yen.

On January 23, the first International Symposium on “Crossing the Oil Age” was held in Beijing. The preliminary report on the implementation of total petroleum consumption control plan and policy research (hereinafter referred to as “the report”) issued at the symposium pointed out that, with the promotion of clean energy, low carbon, safe, efficient transformation and high-quality economic development, China’s total petroleum consumption could reach a peak of 720 million yuan in 2025. Tons.

This will help to achieve the goal of global temperature control of less than 2 degrees Celsius by 2050.

The meeting was sponsored by China EV 100 and China Petroleum Consumption Total Control Program and Policy Research Group (hereinafter referred to as the Oil Control Research Project). The meeting focused on the oil control path, situation analysis of peak oil consumption in China, and the real cost of oil.

China has become the world’s second largest oil consumer and the largest oil importer. Domestic oil consumption and imports are growing steadily.

According to the data of “Development Report of Oil and Gas Industry at Home and Abroad in 2017″ (hereinafter referred to as “Report”) issued by the Economic and Technological Research Institute of China Petroleum Group, China’s apparent crude oil consumption in 2017 is 610 million tons. ​

The report points out that China’s total petroleum consumption control work focuses on the transportation and petrochemical industries. In 2017, China’s transportation oil accounted for more than half of its oil consumption, and petrochemical oil accounted for more than 15%.

The report predicts that transportation oil consumption will peak between 2023 and 2025. We should actively promote the optimization of transportation structure, accelerate the popularization of new energy vehicles, and formulate a timetable and road map for the exit of traditional fuel vehicles.

Chen Qingtai, former deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said that the development of electric vehicles will reduce the demand for oil in the transportation industry. The coordinated development of the automobile revolution and the energy revolution will also greatly improve the energy structure.

“Making the top-level design and timetable of the scientifically proven development strategy of electric vehicles is to lead China’s economy across the”bullnose”of the oil era. Chen Qingtai said.

The report points out that under the circumstances of low self-sufficiency and huge supply gap of some petrochemical products, the capacity scale of the chemical industry should be reasonably controlled and the regeneration of resources should be encouraged.

The most typical way to promote resource regeneration is to recycle plastic products. The report shows that 0.85 tons of plastic raw materials can be obtained for every ton of waste plastics recovered, which is equivalent to saving 1 ton of oil.

Oil consumption is expected to peak in 2030, according to the 2007 edition of World and China Energy Outlook 2050 released by the Institute of Economic and Technological Research of China Petroleum Group. According to the forecast, the proportion of non-fossil energy in China will be about 35% in 2050, which will change from the situation of “one coal is dominant” to that of coal, oil and gas and non-fossil energy.

According to BP Energy Outlook, by 2040, oil, natural gas, coal and non-fossil energy will each account for one fourth of the world’s energy resources.

Fu Chengyu, chairman of the core group of the Oil Control Research Project and former chairman of Sinopec, said that since the Paris Accord set the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the second half of this century, many countries have accelerated the transformation from fossil energy to low carbon energy.

In view of the transformation of energy system to clean energy, Zhang Yuqing, former deputy director of the State Energy Administration, said, “The direction of energy development at the Nineteenth National Congress is to build a clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient modern energy system. However, as fuel and chemical raw materials in important transportation fields, petroleum will be difficult to replace in the future for a long time.

Zhang Yuqing said that the current global energy resources layout and pattern have undergone profound changes. In order to ensure China’s energy security, it is necessary to intensify domestic oil exploration and development efforts, strive to maintain oil production at 200 million tons, accelerate the capacity of natural gas industry to increase reserves, increase production and emergency reserves, and promote the coordinated development of natural gas and new energy.

“More importantly, we should make efficient use of oil from the demand side, accelerate the popularization and application of natural gas in the field of transportation, and slow down the growth of oil consumption demand.” Zhang Yuqing said.

On January 23, the Asian acetone market closed at a stable price of $498-501 per ton, CFR China.